“And only we can go there?” Luke said.

The man nodded. “That is my request. This was my gift to you. It is a gift of thanks and of common brotherhood. I ask that you honor it in that way.”

He stared at them a long moment.

“Your comrades are common dogs to me. Worse than dogs. I would see this entire complex bombed to dust and all its denizens set aflame to die in agony, if Allah would permit it. May it happen this very day. But you are men of honor. You have my undying gratitude, and that of my people.”

He looked at Big Daddy again.

“Thank you. I must go.”

* * *

“You all heard the man,” Montgomery said in his clipped British accent. He was leaning back in a chair, smoking a sweet-smelling cigarette.

He looked at Big Daddy. “This was intelligence offered to these chaps and no one else. If we’re to send men into that desert, then I say let it be them. Barak said he would know who went there, and I believe him. There will almost certainly be video feeds or captures which show who infiltrated the camp. He will take it as an insult if the wrong men go.”

They were all sitting in yet another room—this one served as Big Daddy and Montgomery’s joint intelligence office. It was a haphazard place, with thick plywood as walls, lined with soft egg crate soundproofing. There were three desks, all covered with papers and folders and various vending machine wrappers and empty Coke cans. There were two Toughbook laptops, and wires snaking everywhere.

“Is this really where you hold your top secret meetings?” Mark Swann said. “I mean, look at this place. Nothing about this says Your Eyes Only. I can hear people typing on old IBM Selectric typewriters two makeshift doors away. Is it even safe to talk here?”

Big Daddy shrugged. “Normally we hold secret talks on a windy bridge south of Baghdad where the Madhi Army dumps the dismembered corpses of its enemies into the Tigris River. Would you rather go there?”

Swann shrugged. “Nah. I was teasing you. This’ll be fine.”

Luke was leaning back. He pulled the images from the envelope closer. They were satellite photos taken from a distance that showed the location of the camp superimposed on a map of Iraq, then progressively zoomed in to show more topographical detail, and finally more detail of the camp itself.